One of the worst Sonic games ever released. Day one I found myself enjoying the game with the music and bosses, but the gameplay and level design has always been lacking. Gone are the interesting set pieces and different routes seen in the majority of Sonic titles preceding this, and now we're left with gigantic open worlds filled with nothing. If you really want some platforming, you'll have to be way up in the sky on invisible rails and thin platforms.
And while it is fun to boost off of rails at high speed to see if you can reach another section, or boosting off a platform to reach another in an unintended way, the game is still fundamentally boring in it's actual objectives. The minigames that force you to do mind numbingly boring tasks, the challenges placed around the open world that focus on one part of Sonic's moveset such as side stepping, homing attacking, or "parrying", and cylooping around specific objects. It's extremely tasteless.
The story for this game was written by Ian Flynn, a longtime writer for the IDW and Archie Sonic comics. Similar to those, the writing is very poor, filled with mindless callbacks in an attempt to "strengthen the lore and continuity", and has laughably bad character writing, as everyone suddenly wants to do a 360 on their former personalities. And while what the story was trying to go for with it's characters is appreciated, it ultimately turns a game that could've had an interesting premise, into fixing what was wrong with everyone for the past decade, and setting up hopes for future installments, rather than focusing on the now.
The combat is mindless, you can pull off some neat combos and chains here and there, but the game does nothing to punish you for mindlessly spamming attacks or tries to teach you actual combinations of moves within Sonic's skillset. Extremely disappointing.
Bosses are the same as above, mindless combat with some neat eyecandy in it's QTE's.
The music, while setting itself far from the usual style of music the franchise has, does have a few bangers here and there. I love lo-fi as well as EDM, so this was a treat for my ears. Kellin Quinn as well as Tyler Smyth (who previously did some songs for Sonic Forces) comes along to drop some excellent tracks too.
Visuals are mediocre at best, sometimes the landscape looks great, while other times looks like a bunch of assets thrown together without much thought of synergy or style.
Cyberspace. Thank god these stages are mostly optional for completing the game, because they're some of the worst designed, looking, and feeling levels I've played in not just Sonic, but any other platformer in my life. The physics are complete shit, the level design is questionably bad, and the spectacle of it all is so pathetic. Sonic Generations, a game that came over 10 years before this, blows these stages out of the water with absolutely no struggle.
All in all a mess, I seriously couldn't recommend it to anyone wanting to try a Sonic game out.
And while it is fun to boost off of rails at high speed to see if you can reach another section, or boosting off a platform to reach another in an unintended way, the game is still fundamentally boring in it's actual objectives. The minigames that force you to do mind numbingly boring tasks, the challenges placed around the open world that focus on one part of Sonic's moveset such as side stepping, homing attacking, or "parrying", and cylooping around specific objects. It's extremely tasteless.
The story for this game was written by Ian Flynn, a longtime writer for the IDW and Archie Sonic comics. Similar to those, the writing is very poor, filled with mindless callbacks in an attempt to "strengthen the lore and continuity", and has laughably bad character writing, as everyone suddenly wants to do a 360 on their former personalities. And while what the story was trying to go for with it's characters is appreciated, it ultimately turns a game that could've had an interesting premise, into fixing what was wrong with everyone for the past decade, and setting up hopes for future installments, rather than focusing on the now.
The combat is mindless, you can pull off some neat combos and chains here and there, but the game does nothing to punish you for mindlessly spamming attacks or tries to teach you actual combinations of moves within Sonic's skillset. Extremely disappointing.
Bosses are the same as above, mindless combat with some neat eyecandy in it's QTE's.
The music, while setting itself far from the usual style of music the franchise has, does have a few bangers here and there. I love lo-fi as well as EDM, so this was a treat for my ears. Kellin Quinn as well as Tyler Smyth (who previously did some songs for Sonic Forces) comes along to drop some excellent tracks too.
Visuals are mediocre at best, sometimes the landscape looks great, while other times looks like a bunch of assets thrown together without much thought of synergy or style.
Cyberspace. Thank god these stages are mostly optional for completing the game, because they're some of the worst designed, looking, and feeling levels I've played in not just Sonic, but any other platformer in my life. The physics are complete shit, the level design is questionably bad, and the spectacle of it all is so pathetic. Sonic Generations, a game that came over 10 years before this, blows these stages out of the water with absolutely no struggle.
All in all a mess, I seriously couldn't recommend it to anyone wanting to try a Sonic game out.